Quotes from Madeleine L'Engle

But I did feel, and passionately, that it wasn't fair of God to give us brains enough to ask the ultimate questions if he didn't intend to teach us the answers.

It was still twilight when they reached the flat rock. They sat, and the stone still held the warmth of the day's sun. At first there were only occasional sparkles, but as it got darker Chuck was lost in a daze pf delight as a galaxy of fireflies twinkled on and off, flinging upward in a blaze of light, dropping earthward like falling stars, moving in contiuous effervescent dance.

There was no light. The darkness was deep and there was no dazzle.

For the things which are seen are temporal. But the things which are not seen are eternal.

Lords of melody and song, Lords of roses burning bright, Blue will right the ancient wrong, Though the way is dark and long, Blue will shine with loving light.

The very young woman can be charming and delightful and pretty but only a mature woman can be beautiful; and only a mature man can be strong enough to be tender.

He knew what she wanted, and he wanted it, too; he was ready, but not, despite her gorgeousness, with Tiglah. Tiglah was not worth losing his ability to touch a unicorn.

We want them to see their home planet, Mrs. Whatsit said. The Medium lost the delighted smile she had worn till then. Oh, why must you make me look at unpleasant things when there are so many delightful ones to see? Again Mrs. Which's voice reverberated through the cave. There will no longer be so many pleasant things to look at if responsible people do not do something about the unpleasant ones.

It may be that we have lost our ability to hold a blazing coal, to move unfettered through time, to walk on water, because we have been taught that such things have to be earned; we should deserve them; we must be qualified. We are suspicious of grace. We are afraid of the very lavishness of the gift. But a child rejoices in presents!

It is the nature of love to create. It is the nature of hate to destroy.

Let's be exclusive' Charles Wallace said.

Today we live in a society that seems to be less and less concerned with reality. We drink instant coffee and reconstituted orange juice. We buy our vegetables on cardboard trays covered with plastic. But perhaps the most dehumanizing thing of all is that we have allowed the media to call us consumers--ugly. No! I don't want to be a consumer. Anger consumes. Forest fires consume. Cancer consumes.

Like all great fantasists, he has taught me about life, life in eternity rather than chronology, life in that time in which we are real.

The temptation for farandola or for man or for star is to stay an immature pleasure-seeker. When we seek our own pleasure as the ultimate good we place ourselves as the center of the universe. A fara or a man or a star has his place in the universe, but nothing created is the center.

Maybe we have to sin, to know ourselves human, faulty and flawed, before there is any possibility of greatness. - Nik

matter and energy are the same thing, that size is an illusion, and that time is a material substance.

There are forces working in the world as never before in the history of mankind for standardization, for the regimentation of us all, or what I like to call making muffins of us, muffins all like every other muffin in the muffin tin. This is the limited universe, the drying dissipating universe that we can help our children to avoid by providing them with 'explosive material capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly'.

Alas. What have we done to our good, bawdy, Anglo-Saxon four-letter words? ...We have blunted them so with overuse that they no longer have any real meaning for us. ...When will we be able to redeem our shock words? They have been turned to marshmallows. ...We no longer have anything to cry in time of crisis. 'Help!' we bleat. And no one hears us. 'Help' is another of those four-letter words that don't mean anything any more.

You are given the form, but you must write the sonnet for yourself.

all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.

A book, too, can be a star 'explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly.

And it came to me as I stood on the desert sand, looking at the Great Pyramid, that what any civilization says about God tells us more about that civilization than it does about God.

Are you fighting the Black Thing?" Meg asked. "Oh, yes," Aunt Beast replied. "In doing that, we can never relax. We are called according to His purpose, and whom He calls, them He also justifies. Of course we have help, and without help it would be much more difficult.

The author & the reader know each other: they meet on the bridge of words